"Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1."
"It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price."
"You’re neither right nor wrong because other people agree with you. You’re right because your facts are right and your reasoning is right—and that’s the only thing that makes you right. And if your facts and reasoning are right, you don’t have to worry about anybody else."
"Our favourite holding period is forever." Letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, 1988
"When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is usually the reputation of the business that remains intact."
"Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing."
"If you don't know jewellery, know the jeweller."
"If you don't feel comfortable owning something for 10 years, then don't own it for 10 minutes."
"There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult."
"One’s objective should be to get it right, get it quick, get it out, and get it over... your problem won’t improve with age."
"A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought."
"In the insurance business, there is no statute of limitation on stupidity."
"If a business does well, the stock eventually follows."
"The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect... You need a temperament that neither derives great pleasure from being with the crowd or against the crowd."
"The future is never clear, and you pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus. Uncertainty is the friend of the buyer of long-term values."
"We will only do with your money what we would do with our own."
"Occasionally, a man must rise above principles."
"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently."
"Of one thing be certain: if a CEO is enthused about a particularly foolish acquisition, both his internal staff and his outside advisors will come up with whatever projections are needed to justify his stance. Only in fairy tales are emperors told that they are naked."
When asked how he became so successful in investing, Buffett answered: "we read hundreds and hundreds of annual reports every year."
"I never buy anything unless I can fill out on a piece of paper my reasons. I may be wrong, but I would know the answer to that. “I’m paying $32 billion today for the Coca Cola Company because...” If you can’t answer that question, you shouldn’t buy it. If you can answer that question, and you do it a few times, you’ll make a lot of money."
"You ought to be able to explain why you’re taking the job you’re taking, why you’re making the investment you’re making, or whatever it may be. And if it can’t stand applying pencil to paper, you’d better think it through some more. And if you can’t write an intelligent answer to those questions, don’t do it."
"I really like my life. I've arranged my life so that I can do what I want."
"Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."
"In a bull market your game is to buy and hold until you believe that the bull market is near its end."
"My dear boy," said old Partridge, in great distress "my dear boy, if I sold that stock now I'd lose my position; and then where would I be?"
"It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!"
"Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon."
"The market does not beat them. They beat themselves, because though they have brains they cannot sit tight."
"He really meant to tell them that the big money was not in the individual fluctuations but in the main movements that is, not in reading the tape but in sizing up the entire market and its trend."
"Obviously the thing to do was to be bullish in a bull market and bearish in a bear market."
"When your security is acting right, you can safely add to your line from then forward!"
"When I buy stocks for a rise I like to pay top prices and when I sell I must sell low or not at all."
"When this happens I sell the stock short that is, technically. In other words, I sell more stock than I actually hold."
"Experience has proved to me that real money made in speculating has been in commitments in a stock or commodity showing a profit right from the start."
"It is literally true that millions come easier to a trader after he knows how to trade, than hundreds did in the days of his ignorance."
"If my stock does not act as I anticipated, I immediately determine that the time is not yet ripe – so I close out my commitment."
"The price pattern reminds you that every movement of importance is but a repetition of similar price movements, that just as soon as you can familiarize yourself with the actions of the past, you will be able to anticipate and act correctly and profitably upon forthcoming movements."
"From my point of view, the investors are the big gamblers. They make a bet, stay with it, and if all goes wrong, they lose it all."
"A great many smashes by brilliant men can be traced directly to the swelled head — an expensive disease everywhere to everybody, but particularly in Wall Street to a speculator."
"There is only one side to the stock market; and it is not the bull side or the bear side, but the right side"